...a photoBook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things 'in themselves' and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book...
- Dutch photography critic Ralph Prins

New York is awash in photojournalism -- but is it art? by Jodi Mailander FarrellMcClatchy Newspapers (MCT) 22 October 2007

NEW YORK—The panoramic photograph of a bootless soldier, sprawled almost gracefully in death in Afghanistan, might have made readers pause for a moment if it had appeared in a newspaper or magazine. But when “Taliban Soldier” filled a New York City gallery wall—blown up to near life size—it made the art world take note.

Taken with a large-format camera, the monumental 4- by 8-foot print was presented for $15,000 four years ago at the Ricco Maresca Gallery, a Chelsea stop usually favored by folk and fine art collectors. It catapulted the Paris-based photographer Luc Delahaye, who shot the image on assignment for Newsweek, into international prominence. And it signaled a turning point for a small club of international war and “conflict” photojournalists, who now see their images appearing regularly in gallery and museum shows.

Suddenly, the reality of war, famine, poverty and pain has turned into fine art.

“Great collectors are always looking to be delighted by something that they don’t know about, and this excites some of them,” says Bill Hunt, the former Ricco Maresca co-director of photography who introduced Delahaye to gallery crowds.

Two years ago, Hunt opened his own Chelsea gallery, Hasted Hunt, with co-owner Sarah Hasted. Their inaugural show featured photos by members of VII Photo Agency, an international collective of professional photographers whose images regularly appear in Time, Newsweek, New York Times magazine, The Guardian and the New Yorker.

If you travel to just about any major American city this fall, you will find the work of photojournalists on display. Photos by Delahaye, for instance, are up through Nov. 25 at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where a show that opens in December will feature seven decades of photos from Hungarian Andre Kertesz, one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.

But when it comes to totally immersing yourself in the world of photojournalism in its current state as art “du jour,” there’s no better place than New York, backdrop to some of the last century’s best street photography.

In addition to photo-conscious galleries mostly clustered in Chelsea, Greenwich Village and Midtown, the city is home to the International Center of Photography, a museum and school where you can always catch the works of historical and working photojournalists. The center has a quirky gift shop, with cheap pinhole, fisheye and Holga cameras; and all kinds of trinkets—pillows, purses, trays, coasters—with images on them. Book signing receptions with photographers occur regularly.

New York also has Dashwood Books, a two-year-old independent bookstore in the Village devoted entirely to contemporary photography. The place is owned by David Strettell, former cultural director of Magnum Photos, another international agency of working photographers.

Photo books have risen to their own art form in the past decade. Many curators now feature books as a significant part of exhibitions. For budget-minded picture fans like me, photo books—which sell for as little as $40—are the next best thing.

Here is where I should admit to a personal tie to photography. My husband, Patrick Farrell, has been a staff photographer at the Miami Herald for 20 years. But, like others in my 40-something age bracket, my interest in photography goes back to news images burned into memory soon after birth: UPI photographer Stan Stearns’ image of a three-year-old JFK Jr. saluting the flag during his father’s funeral procession; AP photographer Eddie Adams’ close-up of a Vietcong prisoner’s execution in Saigon; Boston Herald American photographer Stanley J. Forman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning image of a white man using the American flag as a spear to attack a black man at an anti-busing rally in Boston; and, later, Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin’s photo of a lone protestor trying to stop advancing tanks at the Tiananmen Square protests.

It’s no surprise that a generation raised on multi-media and consumerism would not only want to look at frozen moments in time, but also “own” them.

Despite the eyebrow-raising sale price of Delahaye’s billboard-sized photo, the fact is that most photos by professional lensmen and women today are relatively affordable compared to other art forms. That’s part of the medium’s appeal, especially among young art collectors. While a Matisse or Picasso—or even a Diane Arbus photo—may be out of reach, images by prominent working photojournalists can be purchased for under $1,000.

And they’re accessible. Intimidated by walking into a hushed art gallery? An original print by Weegee—a news photographer from the 1930s known for stark black-and-white photos of New York crime scenes and car wrecks—recently appeared on eBay for $1,250.

“Photojournalism has emerged from the backwater of art collecting, especially among people in their late 30s and early 40s who want to collect art and have a greater affinity to the photographic medium,” says Frank Evers, VII Photo Agency’s managing director and a photo collector. “People are reaching out and broadening their horizons, saying `How can I get great art that’s not crazily priced? I don’t want to collect classics; I want something meaningful to me.’ “

There are an estimated 20,000 newspaper photographers in the United States alone today, compared with half that number a decade ago. Most photojournalists presenting their works in galleries come from independent photo agencies, such as VII, Magnum, Sygma and Black Star. That’s not only because they’re tops in their field; they also own their work, a copyright privilege most staff photographers at newspapers and magazines do not possess.

Today’s globe-trotting photojournalists draw inspiration from the war and street photography of Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as the storytelling abilities of American magazine photographers, such as W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Curators call it “reportage,” but most observers will recognize the haunting images hanging on gallery walls today as last week’s magazine spreads documenting some of the world’s most troubled spots: Somalia, Rwanda, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Bosnia and Chechnya.

The photos are not the result of working journalists thrust into news events, shooting what they see and relying on the “F8 and Be There” philosophy. They’re not just in the right place at the right time, their camera’s f/stop aperture stuck on the reliable F8 setting.

“Collecting photojournalism is not a trend or fad—it’s because first and foremost these photographers are artists,” says Evers, the husband of VII photographer Lauren Greenfield, whose images of youth culture and body image sell for $1,500 to $6,000 at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York.

“Their day job as a journalist does not take away from the fact that they see the world and craft images in a way that creates a response from curators and collectors,” Evers says. “It doesn’t matter how you get there—if you have an artist’s eye, they’ll collect you.”

Among the names to watch for on your next New York gallery visit:

James Nachtwey, president of VII Photo Agency, who has been covering world crises since 1981 and was one of the first photographers on the scene at 9/11.

Eugene Richards, another VII photographer known for unflinching black-and-white photos that have captured breast cancer, aging and poverty.

Mary Ellen Mark, a former Magnum photographer, addresses social issues such as runaway children, drug addiction and prostitution. American Photography magazine readers once voted her their favorite woman photographer of all time.

Alex Webb, a Magnum photographer who has documented life in the American South, the Caribbean and Mexico.

Christopher Morris, a founding member of VII who has covered more than 18 wars and foreign conflicts, as well as the presidency of George W. Bush in an essay he calls “Republican America.”

Morris, long-haired and usually sporting a scarf around his neck, has in particular resonated with some collectors. (The scarf, by the way, is more about function than fashion—foreign correspondents wear them to filter smoke and stench.)

“If anybody captures the quintessential photojournalist, it’s long-haired Chris Morris, jumping from war to war, with his scarf around his neck,” says VII’s Evers. “He sees the world in a different way and he has a drive to capture that into an image.”

Striving for perfect composition and color, these shooters also are focused on finding what Cartier-Bresson called the “decisive moment”—a truthful photo that captures the poetry of life without exploiting it. Like a stern tongue-lashing, these images stay with the viewer. They elicit a response without descending into the sentimentality of a Hallmark card or the sensationalism of a screaming headline. The end result looks more like an Old Masters painting than a mug shot.

“‘Taliban’ has the gravity, clarity and resonance of a great history painting,” raved a Village Voice review by critic Vince Aletti at the time of Delahaye’s first New York gallery exhibit. “Sprawled in a ditch among dead leaves and scorched grasses, the soldier regards us through half-opened eyes. His mouth hangs open, as if for some final words, but there’s a deep, red gash in his jaw and a splatter of dried blood on his dusty clothes. Someone has taken his shoes and rifled through his wallet, which was left nearby; there are footprints all over the sand, but he’s alone now—or would be, were the photographer not hovering above him and all of us looking over his shoulder.

“It’s a terrible thing to peer at death like this, to look it in the eye, but Delahaye’s picture never feels voyeuristic or propagandistic,” Aletti wrote. “Rather, like Mathew Brady’s photos of the Civil War dead or Larry Burrows’s pictures from Vietnam, it allows us to glimpse the very mundane, very human toll of war.”

Should death and suffering be a collector’s item, hung on a home’s wall? With photos from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina now appearing in art galleries, the controversy is not just over photojournalism as art; it’s whether art should reflect reality, particularly when that reality is still fresh in our minds. Today’s news consumers have become accustomed to seeing images of dead people in newspapers and on TV, but seeing a huge print of one in an art gallery is quite different. And it makes many people downright uneasy when that image is sold for a lot of money.

Delahaye, for one, avoided the debate. The Frenchman left Magnum Photos and declared the end to his photojournalistic career in 2004. Now, he says, he’s an artist.But, like most art, that’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Bruce Silverstein of Silverstein Photography, one of New York’s most prominent photo galleries, represents the estates of such historic greats as Robert Doisneau (known for his playful images of 1950s Parisian street life) and Ernst Haas (a Magnum photographer who shot innovative color essays for Life magazine). Silverstein favors “documentary” photography from street shooters out to get art, not an assignment. While he recognizes that some photojournalists today have artistic tendencies (he admires the work of Nachtwey, a contract photographer for Time magazine, in particular), Silverstein says there’s a big difference between capturing a historic event and shooting “art.”

“A few of these guys are really good, but one of the difficulties with photojournalism, which makes it hard to cross over into fine art, is that photojournalists depend on their subject matter to make an image,” Silverstein says. “It’s the same problem with a fashion photo: If you take a picture of a beautiful woman, does it mean you have beautiful picture? There are so many people covering events today, someone really has to be unique in order to shine through in this field.”

Jazz by Ed van der Elsken ...5B4I know I have already made my favorites list for 2007 but I do want to slip one late arrival in under the wire while we still have a couple days left. Jazz by Ed Van Der Elsken, originally published by De Bezige Bij in Amsterdam in 1959, has just been released in a facsimile edition from Karl Lagerfeld’s Edition 7L in Paris. This is one of several books that Edition 7L has created a facsimile edition of and in each case they have done so with beautiful results.

This small book, unassuming from the outside with its 6 ¾ by 7 ¼ inch trim size, reveals itself within the span of just a few pages to be a remarkable document in both photography and book design. Elsken’s small format camera and fast speed film is the perfect combination to catch the spontaneity of what is transpiring both on stage and in the crowd. Within a few frames he shifts our vantage point from passive observers of the musicians to placing us in the shoes and on stage among the players. Jumping from wide shots to extreme close-ups, the strength of the photography is its ability to be as energetic as the music.The design, also by Elsken, is another achievement in raising the energy level. The page layouts have their own rhythms and structure that are as metaphorically musical as necessary to create a visual accompaniment that expresses the excitement felt while listening to the music. The book starts with the crowd responding to the first notes and the layout progresses in a fairly traditional way until Miles Davis steps to center stage; Elsken makes a double page spread out of a vertical photo and turns Miles sideways so he defies gravity.Parr and Badger in their citation of this book in Photobook Vol. 1 name William Klein’s New York as a likely influence to the design. I would add that some of Elsken’s page layouts echo the John Hermansader and Reid Miles Blue Note album covers of the late 1950’s with their heavily cropped and contrasty photos of musicians emerging from the darkness. For me, one of the more seductive qualities of the book is how the difference in the coarseness of the film’s grain varies from photo to photo and becomes another element in the design.

Few of the images in Jazz escape with their original Leica proportions intact. Elsken crops the images down to their purest form and mostly for the sake of the book’s design. In one particularly creative page, Elsken splices the faces of Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge onto the same head to form a tenor sax and trumpet playing hybrid. The book ends with a sequence of Sarah Vaughn building to a final never-ending note.

The production work on this facsimile edition was done by Steidl. The original was printed in gravure and with this edition; Steidl has accomplished a beautiful faux-gravure printing that is ever so slightly silvery-blue in tone and deeply rich. The paper choice and tack sharp grain of Elsken’s photos complete the feeling of vintage gravure printing.

The texts by Jan Vrijman, Hugo Claus, Simon Carmiggelt, Friso Endt and Michiel de Ruyter along with a song list of recommended listening appear in their original Dutch. A separate thin-paged booklet of English translations sits in the endpapers.

The regular edition retails for only $30.00 which I find surprising inexpensive considering the fine quality. There is a special edition of 1000 copies also available for $100.00. This special edition is a facsimile made from an original copy of Jazz from Ed Van Der Elsken’s estate where he had written the names of all of the performers in silver ink directly onto the pages.

zaterdag 29 december 2007

Naked women running through woods and meadows is an almost foolproof subject, and in his first solo show in this country, the Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker pursues it with single-minded zeal. Almost all of the women are photographed from behind, seemingly in search of -- or pursued by -- someone or something. It is hard to tell which, a puzzle that lends an air of poetic mystery to these images.

To add to the intrigue, Mr. Kooiker has chosen to give his camera work the look of painting. The soft-focus photos are manipulated in the darkroom, then transformed into digitized images and printed on watercolor paper. The result is a blurry ''painterly'' look in which some bodies are easy to discern, others so indistinct that they all but blend with their woodsy backgrounds.There are figures that could be takes from a pornographic movie, and others that suggest the innocence of, say, an anthropological film on tribal folkways. The most assertive (the works are all untitled) is one bathed in golden light in which a woman with a spectacular mane of Pre-Raphaelite hair, yet reminiscent of a Cézanne bather, steps like a wary animal through a field of tall grass; among the ghostliest is an image so deliberately out of focus that the body is almost indistinguishable from dappled areas of sun and shadow. But these seductive male visions are flawed by the suggestion in the show's sardonic title, ''Hunting and Fishing,'' of women as wild game. GRACE GLUECK

Naked women running through woods and meadows is an almost foolproof subject, and in his first solo show in this country, the Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker pursues it with single-minded zeal. Almost all of the women are photographed from behind, seemingly in search of -- or pursued by -- someone or something. It is hard to tell which, a puzzle that lends an air of poetic mystery to these images.

To add to the intrigue, Mr. Kooiker has chosen to give his camera work the look of painting. The soft-focus photos are manipulated in the darkroom, then transformed into digitized images and printed on watercolor paper. The result is a blurry ''painterly'' look in which some bodies are easy to discern, others so indistinct that they all but blend with their woodsy backgrounds.There are figures that could be takes from a pornographic movie, and others that suggest the innocence of, say, an anthropological film on tribal folkways. The most assertive (the works are all untitled) is one bathed in golden light in which a woman with a spectacular mane of Pre-Raphaelite hair, yet reminiscent of a Cézanne bather, steps like a wary animal through a field of tall grass; among the ghostliest is an image so deliberately out of focus that the body is almost indistinguishable from dappled areas of sun and shadow. But these seductive male visions are flawed by the suggestion in the show's sardonic title, ''Hunting and Fishing,'' of women as wild game. GRACE GLUECK

Around the world, the notion of 'the Dutch landscape' still evokes an image that is strongly influenced by the painterly tradition of unspoilt and idyllic farmland. However, like many other countries, the Netherlands has altered radically over the last century. Agriculture is being supplanted by suburbs, infrastructure for the sake of mobility, and recreation. The Netherlands currently enjoys international renown for its acuity in planning and radically high-tech methods used to control and mould the landscape and nature: water management, engineering technologies for spraying pancake-like layers of sand to drastically reshape or actually create land and computer-controlled horticulture in greenhouses. Since the 1980s, a number of outstanding landscape photographers and video artists have been taking this artificial character of the Dutch landscape and nature as their creative point of departure. Their works of art capture motorways, railways and the recently created landscape of symmetrical polders, glasshouses, business parks and suburban residential districts. At the same time they are searching for a new aesthetic that is no longer based on that of bucolic Old Master paintings. Several of these photographers and artists are already establishing a reputation in the Netherlands and abroad. Nature as Artifice brings them together for the first time, lending their work greater visibility abroad, positioning it in the context of international developments in contemporary art and photography, and simultaneously contributing to new perceptions of the Dutch landscape.

Exhibition at the Kröller-Müller Museum from 7 June to 28 September 2008 in the context of the first Apeldoorn Garden and Landscape Triennial in 2008.Exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany, from 22 October 2008 to 19 January 2009.

donderdag 27 december 2007

OK…the end of 2007 is nigh and although there are still two healthy weeks left I have decided to put out my ‘Best Of” list now instead of spending my New Year’s Eve huddled over a keyboard since I’d rather be drink in hand trying to make that Terry Richardson clown puzzle sign Ole’ Lang Syne. (Maybe that’s an image best put out of your mind ASAP.)

So here are my favorites in an attempted order with five Honorable Mentions. Now mind you I haven’t seen ALL of the books that were published in 2007 so I’m sure I’m missing a few gems. Regardless, all of these titles made me think about photography in new ways even if some held firm to convention. Read more ... 5B4: 5B4 Best Books of 2007

& The Best Photo Books of 2007 : From Afghanistan to the plains of North Dakota, affluence to homelessness, this year's books define photography's big world.

Hans Eijkelboom now has a hip, hit show at Aperture in New York and a clever photo book published in conjunction with it. Sudden exposure didn't happen overnight. Since 1995 he has self published 21 photo diaries and note books in a bewildering array of formats, edition sizes, quality, and content. They are fabulous. Read more ...

maandag 24 december 2007

People have been collecting photographs since the first shots were taken, but its growth in the last decade has been phenomenal. Yet photographs are complex objects involving a minefield of specialist and technical issues. Collecting Photography assembles all the knowledge and information the first-timer needs. It analyzes every aspect of the art, shows how to build a collection, discusses the photographic print, and offers advice on displaying and caring for the images. Written by photography historian and collector Gerry Badger, this highly readable guide is supplemented with advice from some of the world’s leading collectors, curators, and dealers.

About the AuthorCurator, critic, and collector Gerry Badger has written extensively for photography publications. The author of several photography monographs, he lives in London and teaches history of photography at Brighton University.

Content wise, the book is broken roughly into two halves. The first half of the book is a discussion on collecting photographs, how to build a collection, thoughts on value of photographs and a discussion of collecting trends and strategies. The discussion is pragmatic and the author shares good insights to anyone looking to become a collector no-matter what their budget. The reader will come away well informed about what photography collection is all about and what to look for in selecting a photograph. This section is illustrated throughout with numerous examples of collected photographs, most of which are from the 20th century. These cover many different genres with some of them being famous whilst others are more obscure. You can spend a long time just browsing at these photos and getting inspiration from them.

The second half of the book is text only and it contains a series of appendices including: a chronology of photographic history, a glossary of photographic terms and techniques (detailing the many numerous chemical processes that have been used in photographic history), a list of famous photographers and a list of places to buy photos internationally. All these act as valuable references.

This book would be appreciated by anyone who has an interest in photography as an art, a collectable, or just something beautiful to look at. Overall, I found this really enjoyable to read as well as educational and it has inspired me to buy the odd photograph on-line.

The "golden age of book collecting" took place over a period of several decades roughly a century ago. In those days, even the greatest books from the history of moveable type were still available to private buyers; book collecting was a fashionable and high-status activity, and vying for rare treasures was an accepted sport of the ultra-rich — and sometimes a downright obsession. It was in those days that famous multi-millionaires such as J. P. Morgan, Henry Huntington, and Henry Clay Folger put together the exquisite libraries that bear their names. In certain cases, even book dealers became famous celebrities. In the 1920s, when a Shakespeare first folio sold for a record $50,000, it was front-page news in The New York Times. The burgeoning collection of one gung-ho young blueblood book collector, Harry Widener, became the core of Harvard's Widener Library (one of the five or six greatest libraries in the world today) after the eponymous Harry perished aboard the Titanic.Those days are gone now. Most of the great treasures (and many lesser ones) are locked away in museum collections. There are only two Gutenberg Bibles still in private hands, for instance, and neither may ever again come up for public sale; the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. alone hoards no fewer than eighty Shakespeare first folios, forever denying many private collectors the opportunity of ever owning one. So the super-rich have moved on to other forms of self-glorifying conspicuous consumption. With the greatest books grown so scarce, it's no longer possible to build a first-rate private library with anything less than a Gates-caliber fortune.Moreover, book collecting has fallen out of fashion. The main reason is that there's just not all that much out there left to collect. Fortunately, however, there are just a couple of exceptions to this general rule. And one major exception, believe it or not, is photography books.Read more...

Six Things You Should Know About The Photo MarketOurs is a generation that has grown up experiencing world events, and personal histories, through photographs--which may explain why photography has been one of the most potent sectors of the art market for the past 25 years.Read more ...

Seven Tips for Beginning Collectors by Caroline Kinneberg

Starting an art collection can be intimidating for a number of reasons: financial constraints, lack of a formal art background, or the attitude beginning collectors can be greeted with at certain galleries, a standard of customer service W.M. Hunt of the (friendly) Hasted Hunt Gallery describes as: “You could be set on fire and no one would give you a glass of water.” Last week, Hunt moderated a panel at Aperture Foundation’s gallery about the first steps to creating a photography collection. In principle, the advice applies to other sorts of art as well, though Hunt told ARTINFO, "Photography seems like a smaller field of dealers and auction houses. As overwhelming as it is, it's easier to negotiate and, at least in the past, the financial consequences weren't so huge." At the panel, Hunt talked to beginning collector Gael Zafrany, who works at Charles Schwartz Ltd., preserving and creating museum and personal collections; longtime collector David Kronn; Modern Art Obsession blogger Michael Hoeh; and designer Todd Oldham about their experiences as fledgling collectors. ARTINFO gleaned the following pieces of advice on amassing pieces of art: Read more ...

In addition to being a photo curator and critic, Beaumont Newhall was also a "foodie." He wrote an article for the Brighton-Pittsford Post while working at The George Eastman House in Rochester from 1956 to 1969. This upcoming title by Radius Books, Beaumont's Kitchen features articles and recipes from the column along with photos from the "Newhall Circle" including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Other upcoming titles found below along with expected dates are by Lee Friedlander, Malick Sidibe, Bill Owens, and William Christenberry.

vrijdag 21 december 2007

Coolpolitics and Boomerang present a new mini-magazine. The theme of this issue: ‘The changing Dutch landscape’. The vision of Dutch photographers like Morad Bouchakour, Carli Hermes, Cornelie Tollens and Alek (Feriet Tunc Playmate Anneke Weerts) are brought together in the smallest coffee-table-book of Holland and is available at Boomerang racks from December 17th. Read more...

donderdag 20 december 2007

He lived with fellow photographer Ata Kandó (b. 1913 Budapest, Hungary) and her three children amongst the 'ruffians' and bohemians of Paris from 1950 to 1954. Ata was a principled documentarian whose pictures taken in the forests of the Amazon among the Piraoa and Yekuana tribes are her best known, but her more poetic leanings, exemplified in her later Droom in het Woud (Dream in the Wood 1957) must also have been an influence on van der Elsken. Much of his work subjectively documented his own energetic and eccentric life experience, presaging the work of Larry Clark, Nan Goldin or Wolfgang Tillmans. His adopted family and their lives became the subjects of his photographs along with the people he met including, during this Paris period, Edward Steichen who used many of the photographer's images in a survey of Postwar European Photography and in "The Family of Man". Another encounter was with Vali Myers who became the haunting kohl-eyed heroine of "Love on the left bank" (Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint-germain-des-Pres) published in 1956, the first of some twenty publications. Twenty years later she appears in his film Death in the Port Jackson Hotel (1972, 36 min. 16 mm colour).

Moving back to Amsterdam in 1954 he records members of the Dutch avant garde COBRA, including Karel Appel whom he later filmed (Karel Appel, componist korte versie, 1961, 4 min. 16 mm black & white). He then travelled extensively, to Bagara 1957 (now in Democratic Republic of Congo), and to Tokyo and Hong Kong in 1959 to 1960, with Gerda van der Veen, his second wife (also a photographer). Shortly after he records on film the birth of their second child Daan in the old-fashioned working-class Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam (Welkom in het leven, lieve kleine, 1963, 36 min. 16 mm black & white).

His imagery provides quotidian, intimate and autobiographic perspectives on the European zeitgeist between the Second World War and the seventies in the realms of art, music (particularly jazz), and cafe culture. His last film was Bye (1990, 1 hour 48 min, video, 16 mm film, colour and black & white) a characteristic response to his terminal prostate cancer.

woensdag 19 december 2007

1961. John Lennon, in his forward to Jurgen Vollmer’s book “Rock ‘N’ Roll Times” remarked “… Vollmer was the first photographer to capture the beauty and the spirit of The Beatles…We tried very hard to find someone with his touch after we returned from Hamburg, Germany…nobody could…The photographs…speak for themselves.”

Vollmer, along with Astrid Kirscherr and Klaus Voorman befriended the Beatles in Hamburg during the bands initial visit in August, 1960, but it was amidst the three-month stint at the Top Ten Club in March, 1961 when Vollmer approached the band about the possibility of photographing them. The images captured by Vollmer’s lens during a relaxed afternoon photo session sans audience at Hamburg’s Top Ten Club are among this collection of ten 8"x10" black and white photographs procured by our consignor at the very first Beatlefest in 1974 from the photographer himself, Jurgen Vollmer.

As a result of Vollmer’s appearance at that first Beatlefest in New York City, John Lennon’s assistant (and short-term love interest), May Pang, was dispatched to procure a set of the photos. Shortly thereafter, Vollmer and Lennon rekindled their friendship resulting in the famous doorway photograph finding its way onto the cover of John Lennon’s “Rock N Roll” album. MT.

"In early 1954, on a late train from Southend, someone pulled the communication cord. The train ground to a halt. Light bulbs were smashed. Police arrested a gang dressed in Edwardian suits. In April, two gangs, also dressed Edwardian-style, met after a dance. They were ready for action: bricks and sand-filled socks were used. Fifty-five youths were taken in for questioning. The following August Bank Holiday, the first 'Best Dressed Ted Contest' was held. The winner was a twenty-year-old greengrocer's assistant. Thus the Teddy Boy myth was born."

A classic of British documentary photography, "The Teds" is a vivid and absorbing book combining the images of Chris Steele-Perkins and text by Richard Smith to tell a fascinating story that spans some three decades. The book presents Steele-Perkins' unforgettable photographs of the antics, clothes, hairstyles, and in the end, lives of the British working-class youth of the Fifties. The style was tenderly called "Teddy Boy" or "Ted" for short. It brought the American cowboy to the United Kingdom and turned him into (as Elvis Presley did in the United States) the overt and unabashed expression of potent male sexuality.

The "sexy" look has always been as cultivated, artificial, and precise as any other fashion or style that seeks to define a social class, a generation or a zeitgeist. What makes "The Teds" so unique is that the young men expressed all three and, intentionally or not, made the vitality, shamelessness, and exuberance of working-class British youth an enduring and permanent influence on global culture. The Teddy Boys are direct if ingenious representatives of one of the most seminal generations of the 20th century, captured here in stunning photographs by Steele-Perkins.

Smith's articulate, brilliant, and indispensable riff-essays complement Steele-Perkins's photographs in a seamless fusion. Originally published in paperback in 1979, "The Teds" has been re-issued in a hardback form by Dewi Lewis.

"In early 1954, on a late train from Southend, someone pulled the communication cord. The train ground to a halt. Light bulbs were smashed. Police arrested a gang dressed in Edwardian suits. In April, two gangs, also dressed Edwardian-style, met after a dance. They were ready for action: bricks and sand-filled socks were used. Fifty-five youths were taken in for questioning. The following August Bank Holiday, the first 'Best Dressed Ted Contest' was held. The winner was a twenty-year-old greengrocer's assistant. Thus the Teddy Boy myth was born."

A classic of British documentary photography, "The Teds" is a vivid and absorbing book combining the images of Chris Steele-Perkins and text by Richard Smith to tell a fascinating story that spans some three decades. The book presents Steele-Perkins' unforgettable photographs of the antics, clothes, hairstyles, and in the end, lives of the British working-class youth of the Fifties. The style was tenderly called "Teddy Boy" or "Ted" for short. It brought the American cowboy to the United Kingdom and turned him into (as Elvis Presley did in the United States) the overt and unabashed expression of potent male sexuality.

The "sexy" look has always been as cultivated, artificial, and precise as any other fashion or style that seeks to define a social class, a generation or a zeitgeist. What makes "The Teds" so unique is that the young men expressed all three and, intentionally or not, made the vitality, shamelessness, and exuberance of working-class British youth an enduring and permanent influence on global culture. The Teddy Boys are direct if ingenious representatives of one of the most seminal generations of the 20th century, captured here in stunning photographs by Steele-Perkins.

Smith's articulate, brilliant, and indispensable riff-essays complement Steele-Perkins's photographs in a seamless fusion. Originally published in paperback in 1979, "The Teds" has been re-issued in a hardback form by Dewi Lewis.